Our life and society in Asia strongly rely on the seasonal variability
associated with the Asian monsoon and the interannual climate variability
such as El Niño. It is uncertain whether recent changes in
our climate system are a manifestation of its natural variability
or its response to anthropogenic forcing. Even if the natural variability
and anthropogenic forcing are both contributing to the changes, their
relative importance is yet unknown. Certainly, what is essential for
sustainable development of our society are scientific and technological
advances in observing and predicting those climate changes that enables
to take early measures at various levels from policy makers to individuals.

To meet these societal needs, Climate Variations Research Program
aims at deepening our understanding of the mechanisms of the climate
variations through our basic scientific research and model improvement
effort on an international basis and thereby contributing to the improvement
of prediction skill of those variations. In particular, we focus on
climate variations from seasons to decades and related oceanic phenomena
in the Asian-Pacific sector including the Indian Ocean, polar and
subpolar oceans. To understand fundamental processes of those climate
variations, our research is conducted using ocean and atmosphere models
of various degrees of freedom as well as various analysis methods.
We also conduct predictability and application studies on the influence
of the global climate variability upon regional atmospheric and oceanic
phenomena.

Among those phenomena is the well-known climate regime shift in the
northern North Pacific, Indian Ocean Dipole events, decadal modulation
of El Niño /Southern Oscillation, intensification of the Antarctic
Circumpolar Waves and oceanic meridian circulation changes. Clarifying
relations among processes with different temporal and spatial scales
is also an important objective of the program. This program will also
activate interaction between those models and a next-generation high
performance computing system.